Welcome to My Life, 2011

A new year is here, and with it the promise to be better than the last. Show of hands. Who’s holding their breath?

We’re thirteen days into this sucker and I am proud to say that I have yet to break a single New Year’s Resolution. No, I’m not perfect - just wise enough to know I don’t need to throw some well-intentioned decree into the atmosphere about how I’m going to undergo this profound change and why this is the year I’ll get around to becoming a better person. I’m thirty-five, and frankly I’m finally beginning to understand myself well enough to find comfort in knowing that like Popeye, “I am what I am and that’s all that I am.”

It’s true. I’m an enigma. Just when people think they’ve figured me out they realize that they’re barely starting to unravel the mystery that is Me. But let’s face several obvious facts: I will never wear a pair of size 32 jeans again. My hair is graying a little more every day. Each new semester only proves that the students in my classes continue to get younger while I only get older. And now, as I just typed that last period, I realize that I sound like a woman. Not awesome.

But rejoice, for the first few days of 2011 has brought with it and laid upon me some wicked cool (yes, Susan, that was for you) knowledge that I am willing to impart on all of you. For better or worse. Sicker or in health. Funny or just TMI. Mostly I just need to write something. Anything. And also because a friend was sort of having a cruddy day today and said that she needed a good laugh. Hopefully this helps – even if it’s just a little bit.

Eddie Rabbit might have loved a rainy night, but I heart random, and the following list of randomness is what I am willing to throw into the atmosphere to begin 2011…

1)   Wandering the streets of Washington DC at night is truly amazing. Wandering the streets of Washington DC at 1AM? Totally rad and worth the price of admission. There’s just something about the cat and mouse game of dodging potential muggers or cops posed as prostitutes while navigating your way through the streets of our nation’s capital, all the while hoping to catch a glimpse of the President. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t eagerly check the screen on my digital camera after every shot in hopes of finding an orb or two as I photographed various monuments. I guess the rumors of ghosts roaming the White House lawn got to me. My bad.

2)   I don’t talk to my kids nearly enough when I’m travelling. I like to pretend it’s because I don’t want to disrupt whatever groove they might have going on at home and that they’ll hang up the phone and cry to my wife for hours of how they miss me terribly and don’t like it when I’m gone. Truthfully? I’m afraid I might realize their lives actually do go on without me.

3)   DC cab drivers? Nuckin’ futs. Not NYC crazy and all horn happy. Just dangerous. A forty-five minute cab ride from the hotel to the airport is just too much for one man to endure when all he wants to do is get home and see his wife and kids. I didn’t think it was physically possible to get a headache from clenching your butt cheeks together for so long. It is.

4)   I need to lose some weight. Or a lot of weight, depending on who you ask. No matter how you slice it, there are a few leftover Oreos managing to hang around the house party that is my waistline that clearly don’t get the subtlety behind the phrase “you don’t gotta go home, but you can’t stay here.” You remember how weird it was the first time you saw the polar bear running through the jungle on the first season of “Lost” a few years back? Imagine opening the shower curtain and seeing one staring back at you from the mirror. So not cool. Especially when you thought you’ve rid yourself of said polar bear once before.

5)   It is entirely possible to both sweat and freeze your nuts off the same time. Yep. I said it. I know this scientific anomaly is true because it happened to me the other night as I made the two-mile walk from Wal-Mart to home in 28 degree weather just two days after we got 5-inches of snow. I no longer have an appreciation for icicles. And no, I didn’t have to walk home because my wife and I got in a fight because she said we couldn’t buy Oreos. It was a purposeful attempt to start exercising again.

All kidding aside, I want to start 2011 by expressing how grateful I am that you take the time to read, care about, and enjoy the sheer randomness that can be my imagination. I’m appreciative of your texts, emails and Facebook messages that ask when I’m going to publish something new. It’s amazing how something that started out as a joke between a co-worker and I turned into a blog that’s been read in fifteen countries.

Thank you for helping to bring Her Living Room Hero to life.

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